SUNDANCE 2012: Where Do We Go Now?

When the peaceful cohabitation of Christians and Muslims in a small Lebanese town becomes threatened by bigger-picture political conflicts it takes a group of like-minded village women from both sides of the religious divide to stem the tide of violence.

The TIFF Audience Award winner from last year's festival slipped under everyone’s radar prior to its surprise win. But playing under the Spotlight Program here at Sundance it's a great chance for rediscovery. Indeed, it's a clever yet profound microcosm of those entrenched centuries-long religious conflicts that have been the cause of so many unnecessary wars. In this case it's Christians and Muslims, both living in a small Lebanese village, and though their churches sit side by side, they've lived peacefully for years. But when news of a newly sparked conflict in the outside world trickles in, Amale (Labaki), Takla (Moussawbaa), Afaf (Hakim), Yvonne (Maalouf) and Saydeh (Noufaily) band together to plug the leaks of information.

While the threats are dangerous, the methods of the women are comical, a duality in tone controlled masterfully by Labaki. The ruses range from burning newspapers, disrupting television reception, hiring a troupe of Russian showgirls to distract the men, and even holding a town meeting and serving hash-brownies for snacks.

Labaki also peppers some unexpected musical sequences into the narrative. Some proponents have latched onto these scenes and called the film a musical, but if anything they are so few and far between and not integral to the narrative that they are actually distracting.

The ingenuity to praise here is Labaki's artful ability to mix cinematic whimsy with the bleak backdrop of Middle Eastern politics. She populates her village with warmth and flavour – the kind we would see in those small town British comedies like Local Hero and Waking Ned Devine. And Labaki's trump card that she holds in her back pocket is the final scene, which explains the reason for the film's title. Just when we think the women have successfully solved their problem, one last choice to be made could set them back to the beginning. It's a delightful open-ended final frame, which speaks to the never-ending saga of the conflicts in that part of the world.